


But I'm Glad You're Happy

by Epi_girl



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Expensive Headphones is fuckin great, Hanahaki Disease, Multi, Poor Jeremy, also I wanted to make jerm suffer, and hanahaki is fun so, here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 03:43:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11546790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epi_girl/pseuds/Epi_girl
Summary: Jeremy is in love.So is Michael.Just not with him.





	But I'm Glad You're Happy

Looking back, Jeremy thinks he might always have been in love.

Even when he was four years old, small and shy and nervous as he hid behind his fathers legs on someone else's lawn, blue eyes wide with fear, watching silently as a kid wearing a worn out Pac-Man tshirt that was too big for him, a bandaid plastered over his cheek and thick-rimmed glasses glasses perched on his nose, raced out of the house. When he smiled down at Jeremy, coaxing him away from his father and shaking his hand vigorously as he stated his name, ' _Michael_ ', Jeremy instantly felt at home.

Things just clicked between them.

There was no other person Jeremy understood more than his player two. Nobody who's quirks and tendencies he knew better. There was no one he knew the tiniest details about except him, like the fact that when he smiled, Michael's left eye would twitch ever so slightly. Or that he had once spilled honey on a joystick, and couldn't use it anymore. He didn't care about anyone as much as he did Michael.

He doesn't know when those feelings of friendship, those  _platonic_ emotions, shifted.

Doesn't know why he started to see his best friend in a different light than he always had. Didn't, still doesn't know, when it started. Like thinking of the artificial light from his tv shining on Michael's face as ethereal, or his excitement over new patches as cute. Like his passion for games as hypnotizing, or his smiles near intoxicating.

He doesn't know when that happened.

He does know when the flowers started to bloom.

*

Freshman year.

He finds it kind of funny, that Rich told him that was the year he was at Middleborough, but no one cared. He sure knows how that feels.

And though Jeremy doesn't know what he missed, a gaze or a gesture or a love struck expression on someone's face, it was impossible to miss the white, silky, petal he coughed into his hand in the bathroom, leaning shakily on the stained linoleum of the countertop.

*

Hanahaki disease. He has hanahaki disease.

He thought that was only a myth.

Turns out he was wrong.

*

Really, he doesn't know why it started. He doesn't know who his best friend fell in love with, doesn't know he longed for, doesn't know if his interest shifted from person to person. All he knows is that the petals kept coming, smelling sweet even as they forced their way out of his throat.

All he knows is that Michael Mell has never loved him back.

*

When the two of them are sophomores, Jeremy finds himself in Micheal's basement as he hasa thousand times before, familiar controller resting in his hands as the two of them race through the levels, having played the game enough times that they can simply chat with each other, even as their small, pixelated characters move across the landscape.

"Wanna know something weird?" Michael pipes up out of nowhere, and the first thing Jeremy thinks is _yes of course, I want to know about anything you have to say_ , but he settles for "Yeah, sure,"

"Y'know Rich? Rich Goranski?"

"For sure." How could he forget the boy who'd been tormenting them all semester?

"I think I like him."

Jeremy feels the roots tighten in his lungs, and the blossoms tickling his throat.

*

And then the SQUIP happens, and he begins to regret everything he's ever done. Particularly listening to, and trusting a boy that he can't help but be jealous of. 

It's strange, because now he has two intruders inside of him, a malevolent computer in his brain, and delicate white gardenias blooming in his lungs, a petal or blossom forcing its way out of him every so often, each one more bloodstained than the last.

It's somehow stranger to hear the first of the two urging him to get rid of the second.

But what is he supposed to say to explain? _Hello, I'm a teenage boy and I've been in love with my friend for years! I started coughing up flowers when I was younger because he fell in love with someone else, and now I lay awake every night choking because my feelings are unrequited. Please fix it!_

Yeah, right. Like that would work out.

And though the flowers hurt, and serve as a painful reminder, he's not sure if he really wants those feelings to go away.

The SQUIP, of course, finds that irrational and ridiculous.

He couldn't care less.

*

Sometimes Jeremy has nightmares, sometimes gold dreams. Though the worst of the two plague him more often than not.

The nightmares are terrifying things, at least to him. Horrible, vivid visions of Micheal dying, bleeding out while he just stands by helplessly and watches, unable to move as the life slowly drains from his best friend's body, ever so slowly going limp as betrayal and desperation flash over his unnaturally pale face, those damn white gardenias sprouting from the wounds after his body findally goes limp, a morbid sort of beauty to it. Jeremy starts to sob violently, flowers prickling under his skin, leaves pressing up and spilling from his mouth until they burst out of him, blossoms consuming him as he slides to the ground, a sickly sweet scent permeating the air. He falls slowly to the ground, feeling every hiss of pain as the flowers envelop him, stained pink and red with his blood.

He tends to wake up screaming from those, coughing up petals as tears stream down his face.

And in those painfully infrequent pleasant dreams? Well, in those, Michael loves him back, and everything is okay.

*

At this point, Jeremy thinks that the flowers are a part of who he is. They're inside of him, always, and the one consistent thing about his ever changing, complicated, confusing life.

And sometimes, the pain they bring is the only thing that keeps him going.

But more often than not, they keep him down.

*

The SQUIP knows how he feels about Michael, all too well. Of _course_ it does. When you share the same brain with an analytical supercomputer, it tends to take notice of your thought patterns.

It also takes notice of your body, and the things inside of it, the thins affecting it.

It tells him to go after Christine. Christine Canigula.

And Jeremy, _stupid_ , _stupid_ Jeremy, agrees.

* 

It hits Jeremy hard, at the play, when Michael burts in the door to the theatre, silhouette backlit by the flourescent lights of the outside hall, bottle of soda in his hand and a wide, though slightly sad smile on his face. And it really makes him realize just how in love, just how _fucked_ , he is, because his player two is here, even after everything he's done wrong. He can feel the flowers in his throat already, threatening to force their way out of him, right in front of the one person he truly wants to keep this from.

It hits him hard when they navigate through their squipped classmates as though they were video game enemies, just like old times, before this whole mess happened.

And though it hurts like hell, absolute hell, when the Mountain Dew Red sings through his system, forcibly erasing the Keanu Reeves lookalike computer from his brain, it's form flickering as it slowly dissipates before his blurry, tear filled eyes, nothing hurts more than knowing that Michael came to save him when he did nothing at all to warrant him caring at all.

*

The SQUIP might be gone, but the  blossoms aren't. Even after the hospital, he finds white gardenias in his palm every now and again.

He talks to Rich from time to time. Turns out he's bisexual. Also turns out Michael's been stopping by a lot, to the point where he's given him a nickname. 'Antisocial Headphones Kid'.

Cute.

*

Apparently, Michael keeps stopping by. Again and again, over and over, and something must happen that he doesn't see, because when Rich comes back to school, smile more genuine than ever and covered in scars that he doesn't seem the least bit embarrassed about, his fingers are intertwined with Michael's own.

Jeremy tries his hardest not to vomit up a gardenia right then and there. 

*

He's happy for them. He really is.

After all, Michael's been pining after the guy for quite a while, sophomore year at least, maybe longer. Who knows. And it's nice to hear him talking with so much passion and energy about Rich. His best friend is happy with the boy he's dating, and that's great, and he's glad for that.

He just wishes that Michael would look at him the way he looks at Rich. 

He knows it's unrealistic, _goddamnit_ , he knows that all too well. But it's nice to imagine a world where that could even possibly happen. A world where his player two fell in love with _him_ instead, a world where he doesn't cough his throat raw as pale petals fall from his mouth, or fear death every time he feels a blossom. A world where breathing doesn't feel a little more laborious every day as more and more flowers spring up in his lungs, clogging them as the roots dig deeper into the delicate tissue, a constant, dangerous, painfully beautiful reminder of his unrequited feelings. A world where things are okay.

But that look that Michael gets in his eyes, the one that says _I adore you and everything you do, you're my world_ , that's not for him and it never will be.

And it's okay. Really.

He's just fine with watching it unfold. Just fine with letting those white, silky flowers spread.

Just fine.

*

It's senior year, and everything hurts. 

Breathing hurts. Speaking hurts. Hell, even moving around hurts. 

But nobody needs to know.

He smiles anyway, talks as much as he usually does despite the searing pain, doesn't make it obvious that it makes him want to cry when Michael hugs him. 

It's not like he could even afford to get them removed.

*

 _Please be happy_ , he thinks, _when I'm gone_ , as he lies still on the carpet, barely breathing as his eyes flicker in and out of focus.

He doesn't resent Rich for this. Doesn't resent Michael. He was the one who went and fell in love with the person that had only ever seen him as a friend, or a brother. He was the one who couldn't let go, let it move too fast and go too far. He was the one who didn't tell anyone about the flowers. About how they were getting worse.

 _I was the one who let this happen_ , he thinks, a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth, another petal clogging his throat, white suface tainted an unrecognizable crimson.

 

It's a shame, really. Gardenias always were his favourite flower.

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know okay I'm sorry


End file.
